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The pre-1800 formal descriptions of the Australian herpetofauna, all of which originated from the first European settlement at Sydney Cove (1788), are briefly documented. The frogs and reptiles likely to have been present in 21 current reserves in the Sydney basin (defined by a semicircle with Sydney at its centre and a radius equal to the distance from Sydney to Kiama: ca. 100 km) in 1788 are compared with those species present or suspected to be present today. Extent of herpetofaunal loss in these reserves over the past 220 years is estimated and correlated with reserve size, showing that approximately 90% of the original fauna is retained at a mean minimum reserve size ofca. 16,000 ha.

Arthur, J.L., Hachey, M., Sahr, K., Huso, M. and Kiester, A.R. 1978. Patch dynamics and the design of nature reserves. Biological Conservation, 13(1):27-37.
Baudin, N. 1974. The journal of post Captain Nicolas Baudin, Commander-in-Chief of the corvettes Géographe and Naturaliste, assigned by order of the government to a voyage of discovery / translated from the French by Christine Cornell; with a foreword by Jean-Paul Faivre. Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia, 1974.
Belbin, L. 1995. A multivariate approach to the selection of biological reserves. Biodiversity and Conservation, 4:956-963.
Cabeza, M., Moilanen, A. and Possingham, H.P. 2004. Metapopulation Dynamics and Reserve Network Design. Ecology, Genetics and Evolution of Metapopulations, 2004:541-564.
Chapman, A. and Dell, J. 1985. Biology and zoogeography of the amphibians and reptiles of the Western Australian wheatbelt. Records of the Western Australian Museum, 12(1): 1-46.
Cogger, H.G. 1986. Australian proteroglyphous snakes - an historical overview. pp. 143-154 in G.C. Grigg, R. Shine and H. Ehmann (eds), Biology of Australasian Frogs and Reptiles. Surrey Beatty & Sons, Sydney.
Cogger, H.G. 1993. History of discovery of the Reptilia. pp.92-97 in Glasby, C.J., Ross, G.J.B. and Beesley, P.L (eds). Fauna of Australia Vol. 2A Amphibia and Reptilia. Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra.
Cogger, H.G. (1999). The development of Australian herpetology - some statistics. Herpetofauna, 29(2):4-12.
Cogger, H.G. 2000. Reptiles and Amphibians of Australia. Reed New Holland, Sydney (6th ed.) 808 pp.
Covacevich, J.A. and Couper, P.J. 1991. Part 1. Atlas of Queensland's frogs, reptiles birds and mammals, Part 1.2 The Reptile Records. pp 45-140 in Ingram, G.J. and Raven, R.J. (eds). An Atlas of Queensland's Frogs, Reptiles, Birds and Mammals. Queensland Museum, Brisbane 391 pp.
Dampier, W. 1703. A new voyage round the world: describing particularly the Isthmus of America, several coasts and islands in the West Indies, the Isles of Cape Verd, the passage by Terra del Fuego, the South Sea coasts of Chilli, Peru, and Mexico, the Isle of Guam, one of the Ladrones, Mindanao, and other Philippine and East-India islands near Cambodia, China, Formosa, Luconia, Celebes, & c., New Holland, Sumatra, Nicobar Isles, the Cape of Good Hope, and Santa Hellena: their soil, rivers, harbours, plants, fruits, animals, and inhabitants: their customs, religion, government, trade, & c. London: Printed for James Knapton, 1698-1703. Vol.3
DECC (Department of Environment and Climate Change NSW) 2007a. 2008 Guide to NSW National Parks, DECC, Sydney, 75 pp.
DECC (Department of Environment and Climate Change NSW) 2007b. Terrestrial vertebrate fauna of the Greater Southern Sydney Region. Volume 1: Background Report (173 pp) and Volume 2: Fauna of Conservation Concern including priority pest species (265 pp).
Drechsler, M. 2005. Probabilistic approaches to scheduling reserve selection. Biological Conservation, 122(2):253-262
Dunlop, M. and Brown, P.R. 2008. Implications of climate change for Australia's National Reserve System: A preliminary assessment. Report to the Department of Climate Change, February 2008. Department of Climate Change, Canberra, Australia, 188 pp.
Faith, D.P. & Walker, P.A. 1996. Environmental diversity: on the best possible use of surrogate data for assessing the relative biodiversity of sets of areas. Biodiversity and Conservation 5:399-415.
Hilton-Taylor, C. (compiler) 2000. 2000 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK xviii + 61 pp.
Jeffrey, L., Arthur, J.L., Hachey, M., Sahr, K., Huso, M. and Kiester, A.R. 1997. Finding all optimal solutions to the reserve site selection problem: formulation and computational analysis. Environmental and Ecological Statistics, 4(2):153-165.
Kati, V., Devillers, P., Dufrěne, M., Legakis, A., Vokou, D. and Lebrun, P. 2004. Hotspots, complementarity or representativeness? Designing optimal small-scale reserves for biodiversity conservation. Biological Conservation 120:471-480.
Leroux, S.J., Schmiegelow, F.K.A., Lessard, R.B. & Cumming, S.G. 2007. Minimum dynamic reserves: A framework for determining reserve size in ecosystems structured by large disturbances. Biological Conservation, 138(3-4):464-473.
Main, A.R. 1993. History of discovery of the Anura. pp.10-12 in Glasby, C.J., Ross, G.J.B. and Beesley, P.L (eds). Fauna of Australia Vol. 2A Amphibia and Reptilia. Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra.
Moilanen, A., Wintle, B.A., Elith, J. and Burgman, M. 2006. Uncertainty Analysis for Regional-Scale Reserve Selection. Conservation Biology, 20(6):1688-1697.
Péron, F. 1807 Voyage de Découvertes aux Terres Australes, Fait par Ordre du Gouvernement, sur les Corvettes le Géographique, le Naturaliste, et la goëlette le Casuarina, pendant les années 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 et 1804. Historique. Paris: Arthus Bertrand Vol. 1, p.?
Polasky, S., Camm,J.D., Solow,A.R., Csuti, B., White, D. and Ding, R. 2000. Choosing reserve networks with incomplete species information. Biological Conservation, 94(1):1-10.
Polasky, S., Costello, C. and Solow, A. 2005. The Economics of Biodiversity. Chapter 29, pp. 1517-1560 in Handbook of Environmental Economics, Volume 3.
Pressey, R.L., Humphries, C.J., Margules, C.R., Vane-Wright, R.I., & Williams, P.H, 1993. Beyond opportunism: key principles for systematic rerserve selection. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 8:124-128.
Pressey, R.L., Possingham, H.P. & Day, J.R. 1997. Effectiveness of alternative heuristic algorithms for identifying minimum requirements for conservation reserves. Biological Conservation 80:207-219.
Sabbadin, R., Spring, D. and Rabier, C-E 2007. Dynamic reserve site selection under contagion risk of deforestation. Ecological Modelling, 201(1):75-81.
Sattler, P.S. and Taylor, M.J.F. 2008. Building Nature's Safety Net 2008. Progress on the directions for the National Reserve System. WWF-Australia Report, WWF-Australia, Sydney, 64 pp.
Shaw, G. 1794. The Zoology of New Holland. Illustrated by J. Sowerby. London. 33 pp.
Shaw, G. and Nodder, F.P. 1795 Rana australiaca. Naturalist's Miscellany. 6: pl. 200.
Stanbury, P. 1978. Australia's animals: who discovered them?: contemporary accounts and illustrations / selected by Peter Stanbury. The Macleay Museum, University of Sydney
Strange, N., Thorsen, B.E. and Bladt, J. 2006. Optimal reserve selection in a dynamic world. Biological Conservation, 131(1):33-41
Swan, G., Shea, G. and Sadlier, R. 2004. A field guide to reptiles of New South Wales. 2nd Edition, Reed New Holland, Sydney, 302 pp.
White, J. 1790. Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, with sixty five plates of non-descript animals, birds, lizards, serpents, curious cones of trees and other natural productions. Appendix. Debrett, London. 299 pp.
White, A.W. and Burgin, S. 2004. Current status and future prospects of reptiles and frogs in Sydney's urban-impacted bushland reserves. pp. 109-123 in Urban Wildlife: more than meets the eye (D. Lunney and S. Burgin, eds), Royal Zoological Soceity of New South Wales, Mosman, 2004
Whitley, G.P. 1970. Early history of Australian zoology. Royal Zoological Society of NSW, Sydney, 75 pp.
Williams, J.C. and ReVelle, C.S. 1997. Applying mathematical programming to reserve selection. Environmental Modeling and Assessment, 2(3):167-175
Williams, P. H. 2000. WORLDMAP iv WINDOWS: Software and help document 4.2. Privately distributed, London. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/science/projects/worldmap.
Wilson, S. and Swan, G. 2008. A complete guide to reptiles of Australia. 2nd Edition, Reed New Holland, Sydney 512 pp.
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References

Arthur, J.L., Hachey, M., Sahr, K., Huso, M. and Kiester, A.R. 1978. Patch dynamics and the design of nature reserves. Biological Conservation, 13(1):27-37.
Baudin, N. 1974. The journal of post Captain Nicolas Baudin, Commander-in-Chief of the corvettes Géographe and Naturaliste, assigned by order of the government to a voyage of discovery / translated from the French by Christine Cornell; with a foreword by Jean-Paul Faivre. Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia, 1974.
Belbin, L. 1995. A multivariate approach to the selection of biological reserves. Biodiversity and Conservation, 4:956-963.
Cabeza, M., Moilanen, A. and Possingham, H.P. 2004. Metapopulation Dynamics and Reserve Network Design. Ecology, Genetics and Evolution of Metapopulations, 2004:541-564.
Chapman, A. and Dell, J. 1985. Biology and zoogeography of the amphibians and reptiles of the Western Australian wheatbelt. Records of the Western Australian Museum, 12(1): 1-46.
Cogger, H.G. 1986. Australian proteroglyphous snakes - an historical overview. pp. 143-154 in G.C. Grigg, R. Shine and H. Ehmann (eds), Biology of Australasian Frogs and Reptiles. Surrey Beatty & Sons, Sydney.
Cogger, H.G. 1993. History of discovery of the Reptilia. pp.92-97 in Glasby, C.J., Ross, G.J.B. and Beesley, P.L (eds). Fauna of Australia Vol. 2A Amphibia and Reptilia. Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra.
Cogger, H.G. (1999). The development of Australian herpetology - some statistics. Herpetofauna, 29(2):4-12.
Cogger, H.G. 2000. Reptiles and Amphibians of Australia. Reed New Holland, Sydney (6th ed.) 808 pp.
Covacevich, J.A. and Couper, P.J. 1991. Part 1. Atlas of Queensland's frogs, reptiles birds and mammals, Part 1.2 The Reptile Records. pp 45-140 in Ingram, G.J. and Raven, R.J. (eds). An Atlas of Queensland's Frogs, Reptiles, Birds and Mammals. Queensland Museum, Brisbane 391 pp.
Dampier, W. 1703. A new voyage round the world: describing particularly the Isthmus of America, several coasts and islands in the West Indies, the Isles of Cape Verd, the passage by Terra del Fuego, the South Sea coasts of Chilli, Peru, and Mexico, the Isle of Guam, one of the Ladrones, Mindanao, and other Philippine and East-India islands near Cambodia, China, Formosa, Luconia, Celebes, & c., New Holland, Sumatra, Nicobar Isles, the Cape of Good Hope, and Santa Hellena: their soil, rivers, harbours, plants, fruits, animals, and inhabitants: their customs, religion, government, trade, & c. London: Printed for James Knapton, 1698-1703. Vol.3
DECC (Department of Environment and Climate Change NSW) 2007a. 2008 Guide to NSW National Parks, DECC, Sydney, 75 pp.
DECC (Department of Environment and Climate Change NSW) 2007b. Terrestrial vertebrate fauna of the Greater Southern Sydney Region. Volume 1: Background Report (173 pp) and Volume 2: Fauna of Conservation Concern including priority pest species (265 pp).
Drechsler, M. 2005. Probabilistic approaches to scheduling reserve selection. Biological Conservation, 122(2):253-262
Dunlop, M. and Brown, P.R. 2008. Implications of climate change for Australia's National Reserve System: A preliminary assessment. Report to the Department of Climate Change, February 2008. Department of Climate Change, Canberra, Australia, 188 pp.
Faith, D.P. & Walker, P.A. 1996. Environmental diversity: on the best possible use of surrogate data for assessing the relative biodiversity of sets of areas. Biodiversity and Conservation 5:399-415.
Hilton-Taylor, C. (compiler) 2000. 2000 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK xviii + 61 pp.
Jeffrey, L., Arthur, J.L., Hachey, M., Sahr, K., Huso, M. and Kiester, A.R. 1997. Finding all optimal solutions to the reserve site selection problem: formulation and computational analysis. Environmental and Ecological Statistics, 4(2):153-165.
Kati, V., Devillers, P., Dufrěne, M., Legakis, A., Vokou, D. and Lebrun, P. 2004. Hotspots, complementarity or representativeness? Designing optimal small-scale reserves for biodiversity conservation. Biological Conservation 120:471-480.
Leroux, S.J., Schmiegelow, F.K.A., Lessard, R.B. & Cumming, S.G. 2007. Minimum dynamic reserves: A framework for determining reserve size in ecosystems structured by large disturbances. Biological Conservation, 138(3-4):464-473.
Main, A.R. 1993. History of discovery of the Anura. pp.10-12 in Glasby, C.J., Ross, G.J.B. and Beesley, P.L (eds). Fauna of Australia Vol. 2A Amphibia and Reptilia. Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra.
Moilanen, A., Wintle, B.A., Elith, J. and Burgman, M. 2006. Uncertainty Analysis for Regional-Scale Reserve Selection. Conservation Biology, 20(6):1688-1697.
Péron, F. 1807 Voyage de Découvertes aux Terres Australes, Fait par Ordre du Gouvernement, sur les Corvettes le Géographique, le Naturaliste, et la goëlette le Casuarina, pendant les années 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 et 1804. Historique. Paris: Arthus Bertrand Vol. 1, p.?
Polasky, S., Camm,J.D., Solow,A.R., Csuti, B., White, D. and Ding, R. 2000. Choosing reserve networks with incomplete species information. Biological Conservation, 94(1):1-10.
Polasky, S., Costello, C. and Solow, A. 2005. The Economics of Biodiversity. Chapter 29, pp. 1517-1560 in Handbook of Environmental Economics, Volume 3.
Pressey, R.L., Humphries, C.J., Margules, C.R., Vane-Wright, R.I., & Williams, P.H, 1993. Beyond opportunism: key principles for systematic rerserve selection. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 8:124-128.
Pressey, R.L., Possingham, H.P. & Day, J.R. 1997. Effectiveness of alternative heuristic algorithms for identifying minimum requirements for conservation reserves. Biological Conservation 80:207-219.
Sabbadin, R., Spring, D. and Rabier, C-E 2007. Dynamic reserve site selection under contagion risk of deforestation. Ecological Modelling, 201(1):75-81.
Sattler, P.S. and Taylor, M.J.F. 2008. Building Nature's Safety Net 2008. Progress on the directions for the National Reserve System. WWF-Australia Report, WWF-Australia, Sydney, 64 pp.
Shaw, G. 1794. The Zoology of New Holland. Illustrated by J. Sowerby. London. 33 pp.
Shaw, G. and Nodder, F.P. 1795 Rana australiaca. Naturalist's Miscellany. 6: pl. 200.
Stanbury, P. 1978. Australia's animals: who discovered them?: contemporary accounts and illustrations / selected by Peter Stanbury. The Macleay Museum, University of Sydney
Strange, N., Thorsen, B.E. and Bladt, J. 2006. Optimal reserve selection in a dynamic world. Biological Conservation, 131(1):33-41
Swan, G., Shea, G. and Sadlier, R. 2004. A field guide to reptiles of New South Wales. 2nd Edition, Reed New Holland, Sydney, 302 pp.
White, J. 1790. Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, with sixty five plates of non-descript animals, birds, lizards, serpents, curious cones of trees and other natural productions. Appendix. Debrett, London. 299 pp.
White, A.W. and Burgin, S. 2004. Current status and future prospects of reptiles and frogs in Sydney's urban-impacted bushland reserves. pp. 109-123 in Urban Wildlife: more than meets the eye (D. Lunney and S. Burgin, eds), Royal Zoological Soceity of New South Wales, Mosman, 2004
Whitley, G.P. 1970. Early history of Australian zoology. Royal Zoological Society of NSW, Sydney, 75 pp.
Williams, J.C. and ReVelle, C.S. 1997. Applying mathematical programming to reserve selection. Environmental Modeling and Assessment, 2(3):167-175
Williams, P. H. 2000. WORLDMAP iv WINDOWS: Software and help document 4.2. Privately distributed, London. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/science/projects/worldmap.
Wilson, S. and Swan, G. 2008. A complete guide to reptiles of Australia. 2nd Edition, Reed New Holland, Sydney 512 pp.
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